Fast Friends
by Kaen Okami
Summary: Blair does her best to make sure that the newest (and shyest) resident of their apartment knows that they'll be safe and cared for in their newfound home. After all, someone else once did the same for her.


" _Cats are connoisseurs of comfort."_

\- James Herriot

~0~

When she had moved from the outskirts of Death City to the little apartment in its heart, there was one thing that Blair had seen right away. Whether they acknowledged or even realized it or not, these kids were in dire need of someone older and wiser to look after them, to give them good advice and make sure they stayed healthy and safe. Neither of them had much in the way of family around: Soul never said a word about his relatives, if he even had any, and though Spirit was perpetually ready and willing to dote on his daughter, Maka was equally determined not to take anything from her only available parent. So Blair reasoned that a nice, reliable big sister figure would be just what the two of them needed, and that was what she tried her hardest to provide.

A mama cat looking after her kittens, it had occurred to her one day, and the thought had brought a smile to her face.

And then, not too long after Blair had moved in, Maka brought two more newcomers to the apartment, saying that they too were in need of a permanent home. Crona had been too shy to even look her in the eyes at first, mumbling a shaky, "Hello," from behind Maka. Ragnarok had been the complete opposite, bursting out from between Crona's shoulders and loudly expressed his joy at moving in with a "literal sex kitten," earning a snort of laughter from Soul and teeth-grinding rage from Maka.

That about set the tone for the next few weeks of Crona and Ragnarok living in the apartment. Ragnarok acted like a somewhat friendlier version of her usual customers at Chupa Cabra's, which was nothing she couldn't handle (unlike Maka, she was fast enough to slap him upside the head before he could hide behind his meister). But Crona seemed intimidated by the loud and outgoing older woman, though she had understood right away that she couldn't be playful with them the way she sometimes was with Soul. So she had tried to be as gentle with them as she could, and do her best to create a welcoming environment for them, just like Maka and Soul had done for her when she had first moved in.

It appeared as if she was doing a decent enough job at that, though. Crona was slowly but surely warming up to her. They smiled when she welcomed them back from class and laughed softly when she tried to be funny. Last week they'd sat still and let her brush their hair, when she'd asked if she could (she didn't think they were patient enough to let her style it yet, but give it time, she decided), and just a couple nights ago they had been happy to have her, in cat form, curl up on their lap when they all gathered in the living room to watch movies after dinner. It had only been the one time, but it was enough for her to be certain that Crona gave the best ear-scratches she had ever had the pleasure of receiving.

Of course, considering everything the young half-breed had been through, their recovery couldn't exactly be quick and easy. But from what Blair had seen in the past month or so, they seemed to be adjusting very well to their new lifestyle.

As such, it caught her completely off-guard when in the middle of one night, she got up to grab a quick midnight snack, but stopped in the middle of the hall when she heard the sound of sobbing in the living room up ahead. Startled, she pulled her housecoat tighter around herself and peered cautiously around the wall, to see Crona curled up on the couch, their face pressed into their knees and their thin shoulders shaking.

Blair frowned, and said softly, "Hey, there...What's wrong?" They jumped badly at the sound of her voice, and the look on their pale, tearstained face when they realized that they had been found out made something in her chest tighten. "No, don't be scared!" she said quickly, taking a step back to show that she would give them their space. "It's okay, if you just want to be alone, Blair will leave you alone! But if you want to talk about it, we can go sit in the kitchen, have something nice...Blair's not picky, but if there's anything you'd like?"

Crona, still sniffling, considered the offer for a moment before asking tentatively, "Hot chocolate? M-Maka said we had..."

They trailed off, but Blair smiled reassuringly. "Yeah, Blair knows how to make that! Come on," she said, as gently as she could wrapping an arm around Crona's shoulders and guiding them to the kitchen. About three minutes and two steaming mugs of hot chocolate later, both of them sat next to each other at the table. Crona had stopped shaking, but their hands were paler than usual as they gripped the mug. "So," Blair began. "If you want to talk, take as much time as you need. Blair will listen to anything you have to say."

It took another few moments before Crona spoke up. "W-Well...between classes today, in the hall...I heard people talking."

Immediately, Blair tensed. Being a cat, most Death City rumors and gossip reached her sharp ears at some point, and too many of the ones concerning Crona were ugly at best. "Okay. What did they say?"

"They were talking about me. One of them said...he pointed me out and said I was a witch who was going to turn on the whole school again and kill everyone one day." They wouldn't look her in the eyes as they spoke; they just kept staring, distraught, into their mug. "There was this girl with him. She said that Shinigami-sama and Maka and Marie-sensei and everyone else were being stupid for blindly trusting me...that trash like me should never have been let near Shibusen in the first place..."

Blair bit back a hiss, but even in human form she could feel her hackles starting to rise. Keeping her voice as calm as she could, she asked, "Who was saying stupid things like that? Does Blair know them?" Whoever these brats were, she thought, they were asking for a Halloween Cannon right in the mouth. Several, if she could manage it.

"I-I don't know...I didn't want to look at them. I thought if they knew I heard them, it might st-start a fight or something."

"Well, that's reasonable. Blair heard once that monkeys tend to go ballistic when you make eye contact with them."

"I _wanted_ to look, though. I wanted to...to do _something_ so they wouldn't talk so badly about everyone! But I...I was too scared," they admitted, hanging their head lower. "I tried to just ignore it, forget about it, like Soul tells me. Soul says he used to hear people saying bad things about him too, because of his eyes and his teeth and his hair. And I thought I could forget about it like him, but j-just now...I had a dream about it."

Blair raised her eyebrows. So _that_ was what all the crying had been about? "Do you want to talk about that, too?"

Crona gave a short, jerky nod. "I heard that can make it better, so - " Their words caught in their throat, and they swallowed hard. "I-I'm sorry..."

"That's all right. You take your time."

Another few moments went by while they took a deep breath, and then a long, slow swallow of the hot chocolate, before they spoke again. "There was...Everything was dark, no matter where I looked, I didn't know where I was. I called out - called out everyone's names - but no one answered. Not even Ragnarok was there. I think it was around then that I started to get r-really scared, and from there I don't know how long I was just running around and yelling for everyone. But no matter how loud I was or how far I went, all I found was darkness, emptiness...until I ran right into someone. I-I looked up...and I s-saw my mother."

At that, Blair couldn't hold back a low hiss from between clenched teeth. Ever since she was young, her late mistress had taught her that a witch who knowingly harmed either her familiar or her child was the worst kind of filth their world had to offer, and now the mere mention of Crona's mother made her stomach churn. "And what happened then?"

"When I saw it was h-her, I tried to pull away...But she held me, too close, wouldn't let me go. She asked me, 'Why are you still so afraid? We were right about you. You're everything you were born to become.' Th-then she turned my head and made me look to the side, and I saw...all my friends, everyone I love...and they were all d-dead. Their eyes were still open, _staring_ at me...a-and there was so much blood and...and..."

"If you don't want to say too much about that part, that's okay."

Crona swallowed hard, and then continued in a voice barely above a whisper. "I...I remember I started screaming when I saw them. I think...I couldn't stop. But my mother, she just smiled. I tried to get away, but she held me tighter and took my face in her hands and turned my head around again and made me look right in her eyes. She...She said, 'Shhh, it's good that you killed them.' She sounded so _proud_...And that was when I woke up. I-I tried to tell myself that none of it was real, that I would never, _ever_ do that, but I couldn't stop thinking about how those students said I would and I was still so _scared_ and - !"

They broke off into another round of sobbing, and that was the exact moment that Blair's heart shattered. "Oh, _kitten,"_ she murmured, getting up and wrapping her arms protectively around them, letting them bury their face into her shoulder. "It's okay. None of that is ever going to happen, Blair can promise you. You would never let it, right?"

"No...B-But they had a point, I am a witch's child...Wh-What if it _is_ wrong to trust me, I could take after her more than I - "

"And Blair's going to stop you right there," she said firmly. "Those brats had no idea what they were talking about. Do you think Blair would ever try to hurt our friends?"

Crona looked up at her, shocked. "No, of course not! Why would you say that?"

"Well, because Blair used to be a witch's familiar. Technically not witch-born like you, but treated like Gretchen-sama's own daughter. All familiars who transform from human to animal have souls and powers just like their mistresses, and Gretchen-sama made sure to train Blair extra special hard because she wanted a strong child who could defend herself. Blair has just the same power and heritage that you do - does that mean no one should trust Blair?"

"No, but I'm - "

"Not any less trustworthy than Blair," she said with a smile. "Your mother might have taught you to fight for a different reason than mine did, but you chose different than her, didn't you? You'll use your power to protect our friends, just like Blair. Neither of us would ever let anything happen to them, right?"

"Right..." Crona said slowly, leaning in closer to Blair. "You're right."

"Do you feel better now, kitten?"

"Yeah...Hey, Blair? Could you...Would you want to tell me more about your mo - I mean, your mistress?"

Blair's smile broadened. "Mistress, mother, same thing with Gretchen-sama. Sure, I'll tell you all about her! Come on, let's sit back down..."

Crona's eyes were still puffy and their cheeks still red from crying, but they still wore a small smile as they sipped the rest of their hot chocolate down and listened to Blair talk animatedly about the witch who had raised her. As it happened, she said, Gretchen had been a very old witch already when she had adopted her (then very young) familiar and given her the ability to look human, and had spent the next twenty years of their lives teaching Blair everything she had learned over the centuries. It had been just the two of them for that time, as despite being very social in the witch world, Gretchen hadn't had any close friends.

"She said that she used to, though, very long ago when she was still young, but they all ended up killed by other witches," she explained, a note of sadness coming into her voice by the first time. "Blair didn't mind being just with her - two's company, after all - but Gretchen-sama was lonely. That's probably part of why she took in a familiar, too, and why she didn't like how cruel and vicious the witch world was becoming. She said that when she was growing up, they used to stick together more and weren't as distrustful of each other. She said that she thought that the human world had a better idea of how to live, and she hated that there were so many witches who just went and hurt humans for fun. But my mistress wasn't the type to just sit back and do nothing!"

Crona blinked, taken aback by the suddenly renewed excitement in the other's voice. "What did she do?"

"Gretchen-sama became a spy for Shibusen!" Blair said proudly.

"Really? We have spies in the witch world?"

"Yes! Not that many, since most witches aren't like Gretchen-sama. And I suppose the other side might have some here too, but they'd be harder to sneak in, since most of them don't live here in the first place like ours in the witch world live there. Blair never asked Shinigami-sama how good she was at her job, but she must have been, because she kept it up for forty years straight without getting found out!"

"Wow...Where is she now?"

"She...got found out," Blair admitted, her ears drooping. "One of the Shibusen people she always reported to came to the house one day and told Blair that Gretchen-sama had been ambushed on her way home. He wouldn't say what exactly happened to her, which probably was for the better. That was about three years ago...The deal she made with Shibusen said that they would support Blair if anything happened to her, so that was taken care of, but for all that time it was just Blair alone in our empty house." Seeing the distraught look on Crona's face, she quickly perked her ears back up. "But don't worry! That's over for good, now that Blair's made a new home here with all her cute little kittens!"

Crona was not convinced. "You know, if you ever want to talk about what happened to you, Blair, you can come to me if you want," they offered gently. "Maka or Soul would probably be better at it, but...I'll give it my best try. This is my home now, too."

"Aww!" Blair practically leaped off her chair to pull Crona into another, much more exuberant hug, making them yelp in surprise. "You're the sweetest, you know that?"

"Uh..." Crona's cheeks turned faintly gray. "I guess...?"

"And hey, if you like to be alone when you're upset, that's fine, but if not, you don't have to hide out here, okay? Blair will be here for you, too!"

"Thank you..."

"And speaking of that - " Blair glanced at the clock on the microwave, which informed her that it was now one in the morning - "we should probably both get back to bed around now. If you don't mind trying it out, Blair's got an idea to help you sleep better."

"Really? What is it?"

Without another word, Blair transformed in a puff of smoke, and Crona, though startled, kept the presence of mind to catch her now much smaller form. "B-Blair?"

The cat smiled. "Blair saw you looking at all those stuffed animals in the store the other day. They're okay, but maybe cuddling a real kitty at night would be even better? And Blair can go looking for some charms to keep nightmares away if you'd like."

"Th-That's okay, just you would be great." Crona crossed their arms to hold Blair in a more secure position, and turned to head back down the short hallway to their bedroom. "Thanks so much, Blair, really."

"No problem!" As Crona laid back down in their bed and pulled the blankets up, Blair snuggled up to where their neck met their chest, a wave of contentment running through her at the small pocket of heat already forming. "Good night, little kitten."

"Good night, Blair," Crona said, wrapping an arm around the cat and giving the soft fur a gentle stroke. "Thanks again."

"Anytime."

They lay there quiet and still, both feeling much safer than before, and it wasn't long before the two sank together into a deep, dreamless sleep.

 **~0~**


End file.
